Do you think a laptop whith these specs will be on the marked by Q3 2008?

I think they have already upped the spec a fair bit for running Vista

 

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Josh, why exactly do you want those specs though?

Compared to today's top systems that is obviously amazing, but you generally should be comparing to what is necessary for the times. What exactly do you do with computers in general? If you are a gamer, then maybe games will progress enough to the point that specs like that will be necessary (Half Life 3 maybe? Doom 4?), but you shouldn't be looking for specs before knowing what is out and what they'll be compared to the software available.

Personally (and I'm sure this is what you'll do too), I would wait for 2008 to actually come around before choosing the specs I want.

 

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HL3, based on the gap between 1 and 2, should be around in '09 ish.

 

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If they followed the same exact timeline (it was almost an exact 6 year gap between 1 and 2), then we'll get it in November 2010 (or even more exact: November 12th, 2010, as they were 4 days short of 6 years).

Not that any of that really matters to this topic, (not to mention it's all speculation anyway).

 

well, given enough money, and the willingness to run a beta OS, much of this can be done today. Not with quality or finesse, but it's possible.
64bit? check.
Voice Recognition? check.
Windows Vista (beta)? check.
Tablet? Check.

WiFi SUPAR!!! is very likely by then. Blue Ray or HD DVD writers are likely, though they will still be expensive in 2008.

Not addressed in order:

  1) 5-10 Ghz CPUS: I'm not sure about this. With the failure of the Netburst architecture of the Pentium to reach the promised 4GZ, even Intel is moving away from plain clockspeed as a sign of performance. IBM, AMD, and even Intel's new lineup, will be more focused on performance per watt per clock and multi-core than they will outright clock speed.
Keep in mind that for laptop uses, everything needs to be balanced against battery life. A 5-10Ghz processor is going to be supported by a fast bus (the thing that moves the data to the CPU from the RAM,I/O systems, etc), and the bus uses *lots* of power. IIRC, it’s the second biggest power draw on current laptops (behind the LCD backlight).
Multi-core chips also require powerful busses, but I have a feeling that they will begin to get fatter as well; instead of running quickly, they can run wide, and pull more data per clock at a potential power savings. This is not my field, though, so I’m really guessing.

  2) IBM's Cell processor is not a good general purpose chip, and it's lack of Out-of-Order processing ability makes for chip that is heavily dependant on good software to realize the best performance. It may do as well or better than the Xbox 360's Xenon triple-core PPC unit in gaming and low-thread count, high cache-usage code, but neither chips are going to be very effective for desktop or laptop machines.

  3) 4-10 GB RAM: it’s possible, but I doubt we will see it any time soon in the average laptop – most people don’t need that sort of RAM for web surfing etc. Windows XP and Mac OSX are what want a minimum of 512 MB today, not the end user. Just like top of the line laptops can hold 2GB’s worth of RAM today, future machines will be *able* to hold 4-10GB, but most won’t.

 4) 1-2 TB HD: unless magnetic media changes drastically, I doubt we’ll see tetrabytes in laptops anytime soon. There is too much bit interference, even with the new method of standing the bits up on end (Toshiba, IIRC?). Magnetic bits can only be so small before they begin to interfear with each other. And no one wants to carry around a 2lb laptop w/ a 15 lb magnetic HD.
Will we see hundreds of GB’s in a laptop in three years? I’d say yes.

  5) Tablet: Until tablets are ultra-strong, lithe .5 lbs digital legal pads, I doubt it. It’s just not comfortable writing while standing up, etc. Once you sit down to use it, it looses it's advantage. Clamshell-style laptops are just as useful at that point, and are less likely to have their screen scratched during transit.
I would bet that hybrid designs will be much more common; clamshell laptops that open out into a tablet form factor.

  6) Voice recognition: My OS 9 Mac would do what I asked back in 1994: “Computer, save document”, "Computer, Open MS Word", etc. Simple, rudimentary, and ultimately impractical at this juncture. By interfacing with the computer in the same symbol space as we interact with each other (vocal language), we run into interference. Can you imagine an entire train or office of people all talking to their computers at the same time? And people say that the tapping of keys is too loud.
I still see this as a major interfacing advancement, but for very specific applications, and not until the technology side is lightyears ahead in terms of AI pattern recognition, and not just dictionary-matching like we have today.

  7) HD screens is pretty much a given, TV interfacing should be a given, but is currently threatened by the major content holders. Enforcement of DRM through very heavy-handed measures already limits your ability to copy songs from your legally purchased CDs to your own mp3 players; DVD cannot be backed up legally, even though it is legal to have a backup. Bills and lobbying pressure are currently placing a legal threat on our Fair Use Rights, and may prevent TV interfacing from becoming standard on consumer level electronics.
Connecting to and from your own video cameras will be possible through FW 800-type interfaces, but moving things from your TV to your computer becomes more and more unlikely.
Hopefully by 2008 something on this front will have been figured out.

I'm interested to see if we can get reflective OLED screens for use in both indoor and outdoor situations, combined with 20-30 hour battery life, and PixelShader 3.0 graphics cards in our Next-gen laptops.
Either that, or improved OQO's.

 

Josh,

Faster and bigger HDDs - nah I hope not. We'll all be solid state soon and these relatively slow mechanical devices will be museum pieces.

 

I just read in Popular Science that Toshiba is realeasing HD's with this vertical bit method. The article says that there will likely be one terabyte laptop HD's out soon becasuse of this technology. I had not hear of this technology before reading the article.

 

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/bown2005/computing/155ac18872927010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html
heh, cool!

I first heard about this from a flash music video where the bits were all singing Get Up Stand up, or something. Didn't know they were shipping products already, or that 1GB was a possibility for that size! Neat.

 

Thanks for the link wind.